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Raptors: Only thing right about view from cheap seats is the price: Kelly

Up in Section 317 of the Air Canada Centre, the game is reduced to human dimensions, proceeding like an animated diagram. But the price, a mere $4, is less than a small beer.

Star columnist Cathal Kelly sits in a $4 seat in the 11th row of section 317 as the Toronto Raptors play the Washington Wizards at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

They’re tucked up in the far corner of the Air Canada Centre, a half-dozen parsecs away from the court. From every vantage in the gym, this year’s
Raptors
look average. Up here, they also look average-sized.

As the season dwindles into nothingness, steerage is getting cheaper. On Wednesday, against the equally dreadful Wizards, the upper bowl reached subsistence levels. This seat cost me four bucks. Less than a small beer.

The worst seats I’ve ever had were at the Philadelphia portion of the 2008 National League Championship Series. They put me directly behind a six-foot-wide steel girder. I could see third base and first base, and nothing in between. “In between” is where most of baseball happens.

This, I assume, was the least ambitious portion of the Phillies’ revenge for ’93.

Elsewhere, I’ve been wedged up in the lower troposphere at venues across the world. I’ve given up on stairwells several times, and retreated to a bunker with televisions. This is the essence of sportswriting: hoarding your energy.

Luxury boxes are fun, but not for any viewing purposes. You end up hitting the open bar like men going into combat. Halfway through those games, I couldn’t tell you the score. By the end, I’m iffy on the sport.

There’s a $5 service fee (“Here are your tickets”) and a $4.95 delivery fee (“Here are your tickets: The Sequel”). Total cost for a $4 ticket: $13.95.

These also weren’t the cheapest tickets in the NBA on Wednesday. Mid-afternoon, some schlub was trying to unload a pair to see Denver (good team) in Utah for 89 cents a pop.

If they sold the whole ACC at this price point, they’d make $80K. That’s about two-thirds of what Andrea Bargnani was paid Wednesday for bogarting a courtside seat.

Those ducats vary from game to game. On Wednesday night, a courtside perch cost you $782 at the box office.

The media sit two rows back at centre court (retail: $384). Most teams in the league have pushed the media further up into the stands. When they make that move here, I’ll be sure and let you all know to start selling MLSE stock.

Along courtside, basketball is an immersive experience. You can hear the players talking. You can fully appreciate the size of these men and their unlikely athleticism. From my usual seat, five in from the Raptors bench, you also spend much of the game staring at coach Dwane Casey’s back as he stalks the sideline. I’d complain if I thought anyone cared.

Up in Section 317, the game is reduced to human dimensions. It’s little wonder dunks enliven a crowd so much. For those sitting further than 30 or 40 rows back, it’s the only thing that visually pops. All the nuance is erased at this distance. You can’t appreciate ball movement or close action up here. The game proceeds like an animated diagram.

Presumably, if you come up here, you do so to share the electricity of the crowd.

All of that is absorbed by contests during timeouts and the occasional baiting of GameOps hawkers trading public humiliation for free T-shirts.

There’s no one sitting beside me. The two women in front are scrolling through pictures on a smartphone. The kids behind me spend all their energy trying to find another group of friends somewhere else in the stadium.

“I’m waving. Can you see me waving?” Waldo kept where-ing.

The couple to one side was trying to keep an infant occupied. She only began bawling when the Raptors went down by 13. Smart baby.

As has been the case all year, attention is intermittently rewarded. The main event is a steady flail early, and scruffy all the way through.

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